Friday, July 29, 2011

WSOH - We have the winners! :)

Last Friday (7/22), Mozilla was hosting its first WSOH (World Series of Hack) -- an all-night hacking session designed for students currently interning in the Valley. The idea was to have a broad representation of companies on-site (the event was held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA), from top tech giants all the way to small startups. We had no less than 11 organizations joining us (10gen/MongoDB, Box, Dropbox, Flotype (now.js), Github, Google, Meebo, Ning, Scribd, and Yahoo!). Oh, and 5 HOUR ENERGY supplied the liquid fuel for our brains!

Approximately 200 students started 50 new projects as we began WSOH. Teams of up to 4 students were allowed for each project and all the project code is Open Sourced and available on Github. After twelve hours of hacking and caffeination, no less than 32 projects were lined up to compete for first place on the podium.

There were four main judging criteria: 1. Technology (does the demo showcase the power of open Web technologies?)2. Originality (how innovative and unique is the demo?)3. Aesthetics (how good is the visual design and interaction experience?)4. Practicality (how useful is this demo in enhancing the Web today?).

The maximum of points allocated to a project was 40 (10 points each).

Today, I'm happy to announce the winning projects:

- First Place: FuzzyPeach -- A Firefox addon that provides users with analytics about their productivity on the web. Includes functionality to block/limit access to unproductive websites.To be uploaded soon on AMO (https://addons.mozilla.org/)

- Second Place: Munchy Lunchy -- A super-easy way to find out where to go to lunch, whether alone or in a group. Powered by Django, Tornado, BrowserID, and magic.Link: http://munchylunchy.com/

- Third Place: Pigeon Carrier -- An integrated Twitter attachment system using Dropbox, Scribd, and new HTML 5 APIsLink: http://pigeoncarrier.com/

The three winning teams will be at Mozilla HQ on Friday (8/5) to give a live demo of their projects at 3pm PDT. Please join us on Air Mozilla (http://air.mozilla.org/) and IRC (irc.mozilla.org (#wsoh)) on August 5th, but for now, let's give a big round of applause to our winners and all the participants!!! Well done, guys!

And given how successful this event was, you can definitely count on another WSOH next summer. We may even hold a few local WSOH around the world... Ping me (julie@mozilla.com) if you're a student interested in hosting a local World Series of Hack at your university. I'd love to chat with you :)

Until then, happy hacking...

A special thanks to all the Mozillians behind this event, as well as all the company reps who took the time to come hang out with us last Friday!!!